BRAVO DEL TORO. I�m with Comrade Lemieux on Gump, although agnostic on The Departed (it�s just a weird personal thing; I got kinda bored with mob movies around the time of Goodfellas and I don�t go see that many of them, although this one sounds a little different than most).
But the great victory of the night was the three statues for Pan�s Labyrinth, which is a genuine work of art. To weave together fascism and fantasy in the way director Guillermo del Toro did isn�t easy; but he made it look that way, and the result was rich and profound beyond my ability to describe. I didn�t want it to end, and I thought about it for days after I saw it.
As a show, the Oscars were deeply boring. They really need to limit it to the 10 or 12 awards that people actually care about, plus the Thalberg award and the songs, and be done with it in two hours. The movie-going public would be delirious with gratitude.
--Michael Tomasky